On Irresponsibility….and more
Friday, Jan 12 2007

I’ve been responsible. If you look at the simplest details of my life, most specifically my life post-college, it adds up to conventional perfection.

I graduated from a great college, took two months off, got a job, got promoted, lived at home for a while to save up money, and moved out to a nice house in a neighborhood that was probably the safest choice, as well as the closest T-accessible neighborhood to my family. I pay my bills on time, I work hard, I barely drink, I wouldn’t even dream of touching drugs. I’m nice to old people, I’m polite, and I’m the antithesis of dysfunction.

And some part of me wants it to come crashing down.

It’s no secret that I’ve shunned convention in the name of wanting to live an exciting, adventurous, interesting life. But now it seems like I’m falling into the trap of being completely normal and unsurprising! And that makes me want to be unconventional to the point of being irresponsible.

Not in a boringly irresponsible way, though. If I decide to rebel, it won’t be by not paying my Amex bill on time, or by doing drugs or doing nothing at work.

I just want to get away more and more….I want to become a vagabond.

I want to travel with nothing more than a tiny pack on my back with my passport, sunscreen and an extra pair of undies!!

I’m definitely feeling the call more these days….I’m still saving up as much as I can afford to. As of tomorrow, when my big Chri$tmas check comes in, I’ll have around $2850.00 saved towards the trip. That’s a bit over 10% of the total amount I want to save.

(Is it bad that sometimes I think of blowing it all on a nose job?)

I’ve been reading The Drifters, by James Michener, and it’s a really great book so far….it’s about six young people around my age who all end up in Torremolinos, Spain, during the late 1960s, and they end up living as nomads, traveling, working, and living in a world devoted to hedonism.

If anything, it gives me the reassurance that if I want to travel for a long period of time, I can work in lots of different ways to keep the cash coming in. If only it weren’t for those pesky student loans I’ll be paying back until I’m 37….

But after everything, and ESPECIALLY after moving my bed, I know that I’m going to be here for a while. For years. And I’m happy. And I’m having a great time.

But I keep having the urges to throw everything away for the sake of an adventure…..

In other news, I saw Dreamgirls and The Departed today, continuing to work on seeing all the Oscar movies ahead of time. I loved Dreamgirls — more the beginning than any other part, and Jennifer Hudson has an AMAZING voice, and Eddie Murphy was great too — but then The Departed!! WOW!! I loved everything about it. The writing was excellent, the acting was excellent, and I loved those little Scorsesian touches of violence, like when Leonardo DiCaprio stabbed the guy in the face with that long fork, and the hand in the bag….I was surprised that only a few of the Boston accents were deplorably bad. Most were okay, but there was only one that made me cringe. One of the women.

And the scene at “344 Washington Street” in South Boston, that takes place RIGHT down the street from my office! I loved that, and was there a part that very briefly took place in Lynn? I think I saw a Lynn police cruiser very briefly, like blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, and there were two bodies that looked like they were by the reservoir.

I mean, Dreamgirls was really great, too. It was nice to see a musical that wasn’t too Broadway — most Broadway kind of gives me the creeps, but I love R&B, Soul, Motown, and the sixties and seventies. And the costumes were SENSATIONAL — I hope the designer wins the Oscar. There was one dress in particular that the Dreams wore that I loved — this long red poncho-type gown top with gold piping down the middle over these shiny gold pants. It sounds gaudy, but it was nothing short of GORGEOUS.

I’m going to be doing a little travel reading after I Love New York is over (GREAT show!!!! Love the guys!!!!), and then bed, then laundry and The View (I’m addicted) in the morning. I hope it continues to be a snow-free winter!